Welcome back and happy 2011. It was striking to watch everyone’s re-entry this week. The parents arrived at school describing their feelings of exhaustion as they came back into the swing of things but the children came into 2011 with focus and energy, seeming to have grown inches over our two short weeks apart. The classrooms were humming, and one could really feel the fruits of the hard work of the Fall. The children were ready to learn.
Earlier this week in Classroom 8, three girls were working on a structure in the block area. As they attempted to build a tall building they found that after a few minutes it would collapse. Undeterred these girls would start again, building the seemingly identical structure, and this time they began to sing a song that they composed as they worked. The song went like this: “We need to make it o-okay. We need to make it o-okay.” As they continued to work and after several more attempts they sang: “We need to make it perfect. We need to make our castle perfect.” Throughout an extended work time, the girls continued to build, the building continued to collapse, and they continued to sing. The teacher watched from the sideline. The following day these very same girls returned to the blocks, but this time their building was slightly wider at its base, and slightly shorter. The building stood and the girls delighted in their success (as did their teachers!).
Had an outsider witnessed this scene, they might have wondered at first, why didn’t the teachers step in? One might worry, aren’t the children going to feel discouraged? Don’t we have some advice we could offer as to what might make for a more steady structure? The teachers made a different, and I believe sound, educational choice. They chose to give the children the chance to fail, to struggle, and to manage their frustration.
This Tuesday’s Science Times section of the New York Times featured an article entitled, “On Road to Recovery, Past Adversity Provides a Map.” The article spoke to new research that indicates that how one handles hardship may have as much to do with how one has faced challenges in the past as it does with personality or genes. Psychologist Roxane Cohen Silver explains: “Each negative event a person faces leads to an attempt to cope, which forces people to learn about their own capabilities, about their support networks… That kind of learning, we think, is extremely valuable for subsequent coping.” The research shows that in moderate quantities, challenges help people become more resilient; when they have had some experiences with adversity (these include divorce, death of a friend or parents, serious illness, etc.) they are more likely to manage future challenges with resiliency.
This research very much confirms my own intuitive sense of our role as parents and educators as we strive to raise resilient children. We want to raise durable children. We want children who can exhibit that same stick-to-it quality that we saw from these girls in the block area. That experience the children had of tolerating the repeated collapse of their building did not devastate them, but it did provided an obstacle. They had experience with managing their disappointment and they were in a classroom culture where the children did not expect their teachers to “rescue them.” In fact they did not need rescue as they had many coping mechanisms for getting through. And while the research cited in the New York Times does not directly address these small experiences, I believe that a related conclusion would be that the next time these students face a challenging task they will be more confident and capable in surmounting it because they have lived through this experience of a work time of falling block structures.
I am not denying our need and our obligation to protect our children from extreme pain and suffering. Teachers will absolutely step in if it feels that children are in physical or emotional danger, as will good parents. The science findings suggest that “mental toughness is something like physical strength: It cannot develop without exercise and breaks down when overworked.” But, I encourage you to hesitate one minute longer, take one more deep breath, before you jump in to rescue your children when they struggle. It is amazing to watch what they discover when left to their own resourceful natures. As Wendy Mogel reminds us in her best selling parenting book titled, “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee,” there are indeed great growing opportunities if we let our children fall sometimes and develop the necessary shock absorbers for life’s inevitably bumpy road.
And as for we the adults, what do we do with this new scientific data? I believe that we too become stronger when faced with struggles. I would never wish anyone anything but good things for 2011 and I hate to see those around me suffering. But when there are those inevitable challenges ahead, I want to remind you that we have all struggled before and that we have the strength and experience to face those challenges ahead.
Shabbat Shalom,
Ilana received her B.A. from Harvard College and a Master's Degree in Education from Bank Street College. She was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and now lives there with her husband and three children.
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